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South Indian film superstar, RajiniKanth.
We stepped over puddles, rounded a corner, another, plunged into shadow and moist fecal-smells. I’d select a car, that’s what I had to do. It was my only way out. “This one’s mine,” I’d say, then distribute my thank yous, shake their hands, everyone’s hand, even the boneless floppy-gloved fingers of silky Ms. Sylph. “Okay then,” and I’d send my hand diving into my pocket, playing the klutz, dropping, picking up, dropping, picking up my imaginary keys — “okay, see you, thanks again” — while they walked away.
If they walked away.
A shiver through the bag I was holding. Little tremors had been running through the waxy plastic handle for the last several minutes, but this time I pulled out my phone, answered it.
“Siggy? You okay? Just say yes or no.”
The Siggy in me wanted to speak, but the newly hatched Pupkin cut him off, thumbed the red “cancel” button and picked up his pace. Turned out we’d circled back to Blunderbuss Square. A crowd was gathered round what must have been one of those South Indian movie stars, all mustache and bouffant hair and globular shades as he pointed a pistol (or rather, a “glock,” I should say) at the foaming sky. His Indian wife, plaited hair roping down her glittering gold blouse, was covering her ears, squinting her eyes.
Blam! A hurrah from the crowd. Then blam! Blam!
“Listen, Pups,” the Umbrella Man was slowing his gait. “Leave the car. Leave it. Shouldn’t be driving now anyway, all jittery like this. We’ll put you up somewhere, Pups. Have a nap, a shower, settle the nerves.”
“Boss,” said Sax. “We got work. Got a text from Egor.”
“Sure. We’ll set Pupkin up at the X-Trade then. They’ll sort him out. Hotel, some food. Who wouldn’t want to give a pat to the Puppy-Man, huh?”
We passed through the open door of a fast food joint called KFC, though it looked nothing like a KFC. In fact, it looked like a barber shop. A blue caped customer appeared to be having his hair cut while eating fried wantons from a paper cup. There were only three types of food in the squat fly enclosure that served as a display case. Fried wantons. Fried fish cakes. And Bintang beer. The owner, sheers in one hand, cellphone in the other, circled his seated patron, talking into his fist and snapping the scissors and never quite cutting anything.
But the KFC had a back door, which was open, and through it, in the gaping shimmer of dark, I could make out a pile-up of shabby men and their makeshift machines, a sort of Internet cafe, only more crowded, less structured, huddles of men around single units, wires cascading down the tables. In front of the door sat a tobacco-chewing islander with a large gun, a kind of hunting rifle, I think, with a slender wooden stock (or “butt”?).
We didn’t move. Goldy and Sax were squashing their chins, working their phones. The Umbrella Man was whispering to his assistant. When I turned around, the backroom shadows congealed into an enormous, droopy-eyed fellow who choked up the entire doorway, squeezed out, stood before me.
“Pupkin,” I could hear Sax’s voice behind me. “Pick up your phone.”
Indeed, the duffel bag was trembling. I could answer, hang up, play dumb. I retrieved the phone, brought it to my ear.
“Hello.”
“You Pupkin?”
The little zipper voice in my ear didn’t correlate with the newly emerged leviathan before me, and yet it was clearly his gaping grotto mouth that was uttering those same words into his phone.
“Yes.”
“What’s your password?”
“I’m sorry?”
I started to lower my phone, but Bapi reached out his fleshy torpedo arm, raised my phone to my ear again.
“I’m Bapi.”
Just then another fellow emerged, smaller, wrinkled, feral-lipped, with a cigarette behind his ear.
“This is — shit,” said Bapi, “what’s your name again? Flinty? Flicker?”
The second man, greusomely grinning, said nothing.
“You heard of the Little Glory,” asked Bapi into his phone. “That’s where we’re taking you. What’s your password?”
This is when I turned around, seeking an explanation from the Umbrella Man and his crew, but they were all gone. And only my wife’s composed and radiant face, as she stepped eagerly into the KFC, was there to greet me.
“Who were those people?”
“Where’s the car,” I asked.
“I thought you took it. Who’s bag is that?”
“Drugs,” I said.
“A Lumia 610,” expounded Bapi, still speaking into his phone, big eyes loping toward my wife. “Pair of Nikes, wrist-gnashers, some ciggies, bit of gold, ain’t that right?”
“My money’s gone,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Had to pay someone. Buried the rest. They told me to. It was the only way.”
The secret staggering blue of her eyes.
“I’m no longer your Siggy either,” I added. “Now please love, go have a look inside that door.”
___
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